1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to text string representations in data processing systems and in particular to mapping text strings from one character set to another. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to automatically generating and saving a text string entered in one character set together with a sound-mapped representation of the same text string in another character set.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multinational companies often run information system (IS) networks which span multiple locales spread around the globe. To maximize the usefulness of such networks, operations within each country tend to run in the local language of the country. Where possible, names of abstract objects in user applications are in the local language and match the local language organization, city, or human names which the abstract objects represent. In the case of system management software, often abstract objects would represent each of a global enterprise""s local offices.
Central management of such a global network may be difficult or impossible when abstract object names utilize the local language and the local language""s underlying character set. For offices located in Egypt, abstract objects would most naturally be named in Arabic; for those in Russia, object names would utilize the Cyrillic character set. A problem arises, however, when a enterprise""s headquarters IS staff attempts to examine these objects. The IS staff at the multinational headquarters located in the United States is unlikely to be able to read Arabic or recognize Cyrillic characters.
Hebrew, for example, is a language which employs a character set unfamiliar to most users. Users unfamiliar with those characters will have difficulty identifying a particular abstract object named in Hebrew. Merely seeing a character provides no clue as to the character""s identity, and even the seemingly simple task of describing a character over the telephone can be extremely challenging. Consider, for example, how to describe the characters xe2x80x9cxe2x80x9d over the telephone without some knowledge of the Hebrew character set. Add to this problem the complication that Hebrew is conventionally written as a right-to-left language, so that the characters actually appear to the user as xe2x80x9cxe2x80x9d, and the difficulty of simply discussing abstract object names in Hebrew over the telephone with a counterpart becomes virtually insurmountable.
It would be desirable, therefore, to automatically generate and save a text string: entered in one character set together with the same text string sound-mapped to characters in another character set.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for generating text string representations in data processing systems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for mapping text strings from one character set to another in data processing systems.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for automatically generating and saving a text string entered in one character set together with a sound-mapped representation of the same text string in another character set.
The foregoing objects are achieved as is now described. A three-field text string class is employed for data entered in a language which does not employ the latin alphabet or latin character set, but does employ a character set which may be readily sound-mapped to the latin character set. The entered text is stored in a first field of the text string class, while an automatically transliterated representation of the data entered is stored in a second field. The transliteration is generated utilizing a character-mapping resource file table specific to the language in which the text was entered and the language employing the latin character set. The contents of the second field thus provide a recognizable representation of the text string to users unfamiliar with the character set of the language in which the text was entered. The second field""s contents also provide a pronunciation key for the entered text string for nonspeakers. An abstract object name entered in Cyrillic characters may thus be recognized and properly pronounced by an user who only speaks English.
The above as well as additional objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.